How? Working for Print in ArcGIS

I don't work too often for print these days, but occasionally I'll dip my toe into that water again. Usually, given that I work for Esri, that means using one of the ArcGIS products. This is a guide to the capabilities, and the potential pitfalls, I've found working in ArcGIS for print.

For more information on some of the theory behind this, see  here . Note that, at the time of writing, I'm using the November 2024 release of ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, and ArcGIS Pro 3.4

ArcGIS has come a long way in its support for printed maps and documents. Historically it was difficult to work with, because, although it had a CMYK output, the screen preview remained stubbornly RGB and did not represent the final look of the map.

Many of us who worked in the print environment appreciated the data wrangling and analytical capabilities of Arc (be it -Info, -GIS, or -GIS Pro), but would always move the final product to something like Adobe Illustrator for finishing off.

This is no longer necessary. There are some hoops to jump through, but many jobs can be taken straight from ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online to the printed map.

Check with the printer! The preferred color mode for printing is CMYK. However, most printers these days are adept at handling RGB documents, as they are reproducing content that has been created online. Although I’m sure that they would prefer to get CMYK, it may be that the extra effort involved in converting on-screen maps is not a good use of your time.

However, If you are starting a map for print only, work in CMYK.

If you are intending it's use in both environments, it may be safer to build in CMYK and convert afterwards. The map will maintain its appearance when you convert from CMYK to RGB, but it won't be straying into the extremes of the RGB color space.

CMYK settings are available in ArcGIS Pro. However, the default color mode is RGB.

Historically this was a problem. Just changing the color picker to CMYK in the map did not ensure an accurate screen rendering of the color. For example, 100% Cyan in CMYK appeared as 0,255,255 on screen (an out of gamut color). Trying to choose colors for a printed map was nearly impossible, and I would test them out in something like Adobe Illustrator before applying them.

That is no longer the case. However, if you are going to work in CMYK you should set up properly for it.

To work and export in CMYK:

If you are planning a series of maps for print it makes sense to set a project up for all of them.

• Go to Project/Options/Color Management.

• Make sure that 'Enable Color Management' is turned on.

• Change the default color to CMYK. Unless you have other information from a printer/customer, you can leave the color profile as the default: ‘U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2’.

• Imported RGB map layers will come in as CMYK. You will likely see a shift in the color palette, so some adjustment may be needed.

As long as 'Enable Color Management' is checked, individual maps can be set up for CMYK within an existing RGB project.

• If you are building a new map, change the color mode to CMYK before you start work (within the document properties, look for ‘Color Management’). Similarly, if you are using a layout, make sure that is set for CMYK too.

• If you are adjusting an existing map that you started in RGB, change the color mode to CMYK before you continue work. You will likely see a shift in the color palette when you go back to your map, so some adjustment may be needed.

When colors overlap, overprint retains the components of the background color that are not in the foreground color (See  here  for more information).

When formatting a CMYK color in the ‘Symbology’ pane, look for the ‘Overprint’ check box under ‘Properties/Output’

Note that ’Overprint’ does not preview in ArcGIS Pro, so you may have to export the map to see the result.

There is no way of applying CMYK color directly in ArcGIS Online. However, you can export a selected area using the 'Print' tool. Use the 'Layout' option if you want more control over the size of your export.

A PDF export will provide a vector format that you can use directly. If you have it available, you can open this in Adobe Acrobat, and go to 'Tools/Print Production/Convert Colors' to find the CMYK tools (Acrobat Reader does not have this option).

As outlined above, there is a possibility of a color shift when you convert, particularly if you are using a map with bright colors.

AIX format will allow you to use the ‘ArcGIS for Creative Cloud’ plug-in to open into Adobe Illustrator. There, you can make selective edits to any vector information.

Since our basemaps moved to vector format, we have the option of maintaining their vector information when we export for print (PDF is the preferred format for most of this work). If there is a raster component, such as hillshade, set the output resolution so that it is 300 dpi at the final printing size.

But basemaps are built in RGB. If you are exporting from ArcGIS Pro, even though it may be set to CMYK, converted RGB values will be retained in the export. Fortunately, most basemaps are background features, so the possibility of a color shift is reduced. Check the converted map carefully though.

If you really want to work through this, consider exporting as AIX. Use the ‘ ArcGIS for Creative Cloud ’ plug-in to open the export in Adobe Illustrator, then edit the colors there. It's likely that this will involve quite a bit of extra work! Bear this in mind when you make your selection of basemap and consider switching off any superfluous content using the  Vector Tile Style Editor .

If I am using one of the 'gray' basemaps (Canvas, or Human Geography for example), and if I have the time, I will use this approach to convert the information to black ink (K) only. See 'Color Standards'  here  for more information.

This may include raster data, hillshade, and/or imagery. The format will be RGB, and there is not much you can do easily in ArcGIS to manage the conversion to CMYK. Usually it's straight-forward, but any ‘out of gamut’ colors will change in appearance. Placing them in a CMYK-format map in ArcGIS Pro will give you some indication of what will happen.

With basemaps and imagery this is not usually too much of a problem, although imagery can get a little dark sometimes. With other raster data, test out some of the brighter colors before export to assess how they will react, then make adjustments if you can and need to.

It is conceivable that you could make edits to the exported image in something like Adobe Photoshop, but there may be limits to what you can do. If you can avoid the need for that it would be preferable.

If you have taken your map into Illustrator, Photoshop, or another graphics application, you have opened it up to their editing capabilities, but be careful!

The problem with the historical workflow I discussed at the start of this was that there was no going back. ArcGIS is the preferred platform for managing and updating data, but once you have made significant changes in another application, you are left with a quandary:

• Do you update and maintain the data in ArcGIS, then export again and redo the additional work?

• Do you ignore the ArcGIS version, and apply updates directly to the exported file? This may be quicker, but it means that the ArcGIS version is out-of-date.

• Or do you take extra time to make updates to both?

Too often, when deadlines were tight (and they usually were), we found ourselves focusing so much work on the exported files that the ArcGIS master project became hopelessly disconnected.

So you will need some discipline. Unless your map is a one-off, try to limit the amount of additional work you do outside of the master. The more finishing work you can do to an ArcGIS master project, the easier it will be to maintain it in the future.

Follow  John Nelson's work  as a guide to how you can introduce some of the more graphic effects directly to your ArcGIS map.

This is the fifth in a series of 'How to' Stories looking at the ways I develop my work. The other sections are:

  Planning and Executing a Map Project 

  Working with Color   

  Building Maps for Vision deficiency  

 Maps and Printing 

Andy Skinner, 2024